The Eye of the Aethiopica
The Eye of the Aethiopica is the wizard quest artifact. It is neutral for wishing purposes; if you are a wizard, it will adjust its alignment to your starting alignment. A wizard cannot wish for the Eye. Its base item type is amulet of ESP, so wearing it provides extrinsic telepathy. You can also abuse the naming artifacts exploit to determine whether an unidentified amulet is ESP or not. Special effects The Eye of the Aethiopica provides extrinsic telepathy and magic resistance when worn. Take caution not to depend solely upon the Eye for magic resistance if you are a wizard; the Wizard of Yendor can steal the Eye, thus removing your magic resistance and rendering you vulnerable to harmful effects. While carried, The Eye provides half spell damage and fast power regeneration. With fast power regeneration, you restore at least one power per turn -- this is far quicker than you would otherwise. In addition, you can invoke the Eye to branchport. In other words, you can immediately teleport to another branch of the dungeon that you have visited. You arrive on the entry level or the lowest previously-visited level of that branch, depending on whether your current location is above or below the target dungeon branch's entry level. This means you will always go to the lowest level of the Dungeons of Doom, Sokoban, and Vlad's Tower; and porting to Gehennom always brings you to the Valley of the Dead unless coming from Vlad's. Attempting to branchport to the branch you are currently in (or from the Endgame or carrying the Amulet of Yendor) gives the message "You feel very disoriented for a moment." and has no effect. Adjacent hostile monsters that normally follow you up stairs will follow you through the gate into the new branch; this is a common method to transport many wraiths from the Valley of the Dead so they are more likely to leave a corpse. The branchport ability of the Eye makes Sokoban an ideal stash location. Since this is at quite a shallow depth, you can usually return quickly by digging down with a pick-axe. Or you could branchport back to the lowest main dungeon level you saw, which might often be the place you interrupted exploring. A typical branchport menu might look like: Open a portal to which dungeon? ---------- |........-#### ------------- a - The Dungeons of Doom |........| #######-...........| b - Gehennom |........| |...........| c - The Gnomish Mines ---------- |..@........| d - The Quest --------+---- e - Sokoban # f - Fort Ludios # (end) In the opinion of many experts, the Eye of the Aethiopica is not only the best artifact in NetHack, but also the best item. Cautions Like any quest artifact, if you don't match all of its affiliations, it will blast you for up to 40 damage (20 if you have magic resistance). For example a neutral ranger would be blasted for not being a wizard by the artifact when you pick it up, put it on or try to invoke it. Invoking it as a non-wizard will still allow you to branchport after being blasted. Encyclopedia entry Eye of the Aethiopica Eye of the Aethiopica